Holden Volt Gets Local Price, Swathe Of Gadgets

After months of speculation, Holden has finally given its first all-electric car, the Volt, a local price, and detailed some of the nifty gadgets that will be bolted on when it rolls onto showroom floors in a few months.

The 1.4-litre, 4-cylinder Volt isn’t cheap. It’s essentially a glorified Cruze with a $59,990 price tag (plus on-road costs). For that amount of money, you’re going to want something more than just a sedan with some AA batteries in it. Thankfully, Holden have tried as hard as it can to meet that need.

On top of the eight airbags, reversing camera and all-electric drive, you’ll get a six-speaker sound system by Bose, as well as a 7-inch colour LCD touchscreen built into the console that includes voice recognition, Bluetooth connectivity, DVD playback, satellite navigation, USB input and iPod compatibility. On top of that, it has a 30GB hard drive to store all your tracks.

Apparently, Holden are positioning the car alongside more expensive European brands like BMW and Mercedes Benz in the hope that they can persuade the more connected driver.

Discuss

The engineering is sound, and the per-km cost savings are real, but the AU price gouge is going to eliminate most of the buyers. The $20k disparity between US and AU pricing makes me think Holden is simply pricing them on the basis of what the competition is doing, rather than on what their landed cost is, since the Leaf and iMiev are similarly overpriced here.

If you just want to save the environment and fuel cost, buy a Hybrid Camry for under $30k drive-away, for a saving of over 50% against the Volt.

If you have home solar, just add a battery conversion to a Hybrid Camry for $12-15k, and you end up with a plug-in car that can be charged for close-to-free, has 5-passenger capacity and sufficient range for most urban commutes, a much more powerful ICE engine for when you need it, and it's still more than $20k cheaper than the Volt.